Time's Arrow, Part II

There's a bit of Mark Twain in an episode that features his character. The whole crew finally ends up together along with Guinan. Data's dismembered head is the critical thing. After a narrow escape from the evil space cannibals, Data, driving a horse and buggy, drives everyone back to the aforementioned cave. There they are to meet their adversaries. All is going well until Mark Twain shows up and throws a monkey wrench into the works. All manage to escape to the Enterprise to continue pursuit, but Picard and Guinan are left behind along with the head of Data. Also in the cave is one of the dying aliens, who tells Picard that if the Enterprise attacks her planet, they will destroy themselves. Twain has caused huge damage to the process. He is going to cause more trouble so the crew beams him aboard. The way they ultimately get a message back to the ship is so far fetched that it is beyond the pale. Still, it is a bit of fun.

After arguably STNG's finest episode "The Inner Light", this two-parter continues the excellence, marred only by the performance of Hardin, an otherwise fine actor. His exaggerated Samuel Clemens, with its irritating, grinding old miner inflections and affectations, had me muting his portions after awhile. Too bad, because this episode is so cleverly written and so well performed, it is a flaw that should have been fixed. Otherwise I would have given this 9 stars.

This was a fun time travel episode, complete with period outfits and everything. The ending got a little strained, I would have preferred they just didn't have a ticking clock over a cringey, totally fake ticking clock. It's like, "Oh my God we gotta stop these time traveling aliens who have had, who knows how many millennia to time travel, in like the next five seconds or... well, let's just do it right away for no reason!"

Given that the whole plot overall also frequently lacks much meat-on-the-bone, I think it averages out with the fun and adventure to an 8/10.

In part one, Data was beamed back to San Francisco in 1893 and he cannot get back to the Enterprise. But the crew are able to come up with some confusing way to join Data and they learn about the weird creatures that have come to Earth's past to kill people and harvest the energy in the victims' brains and spinal columns. Naturally they have to stop this as well as all return to the present. There is a slight glitch, however, as Mark Twain (yes, THAT Mark Twain) learns about their plans and threatens the timeline because of this.

I enjoyed part one more than part two simply because I didn't love the Mark Twain angle and I also thought the character was a bit too hammy. He wasn't terrible--I just didn't like this in the story. Worth seeing, however.

This second part was written by Jeri, who captured the essence of the first part. Of course, she had to wrangle a part for her son (Who would later become Vorick in Voyager) as the young reporter Twain is talking to in the teaser.

In fact, this teaser threw me for a loop, I had been expecting Twain to react differently. I had thought he was more of a progressive gent, but then again, he was acting on a perceived threat. And that is what made the characterization great.

Of course, Picard's away team is also acting on the same perceived threat, but with Landladies and crooked policemen (Played by William Boyett of "The Big Goodbye") interfering, it was harder for their little Shakespearean Acting Troop. But the meat of this story is all laid out here, where Data's history coincides with the Away Team's history, and both coincide to 1893's "Cholera Epidemic". This part of the story moves a lot more rapidly, as it is less Discovery and more Solution. And of course, includes Picard's very first meeting with Guinan.

Meanwhile, Twain is investigating Data, so eventually all blazes get let loose when all parties involved including the Dividia-II aliens meet up in the Mining Shaft. It's kind of an Er, "Explosive" situation. Which gives Twain a unique opportunity to meet a "were-Worf" I think such "time shifts" would drive normal people mad.

But the idea was to solve this conundrum and have fun at the same time, and it was a success in that respect. As a Fan of both Twain and Trek I was tickled. These two episodes speak for themselves, this is again the Heart of Trek- Prevent Alien Incursions, and Have Fun with Historical Figures.